Human Rights Violations against Non-albanian Kosovars

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UNHCR Increasingly Alarmed by Attacks on Serbs and Roma in Kosovo
16 July 1999

16 July 1999

UNHCR Increasingly Alarmed by Attacks on Serbs and Roma in Kosovo

By Wendy Lubetkin
USIA European Correspondent

Geneva -- The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says it is increasingly alarmed by the number of attacks against Serbs and Roma in Kosovo, including killings, kidnappings and forced expulsions, and by what appears to be a "systematic campaign" to destroy Serb homes.

 "There have been a string of incidents this week involving minorities," said UNHCR spokesperson Kris Janowski. "Two refugees -- a Bosnian Serb and a Krajina Serb -- were abducted Monday from a refugee collective center in downtown Pristina. We had to move the entire collective center to another safer location."

 In Pristina earlier in the week, about a dozen homes and an Orthodox church were set on fire, and three Serbs were reported to have been shot, Janowski told a July 16 press briefing. In the Mitrovica region, a group of 29 mostly elderly Serbs and Roma turned up after being expelled from their homes and walking 80 kilometers through the mountains.

 In Prizren, in the space of less than one week, nearly 50 houses were set on fire in what UNHCR said appears to be "a systematic campaign" to destroy Serb homes.

 "Of course it is extremely difficult to build reconciliation on so many graves," Janowski said. "Nonetheless, what is happening to the minorities in Kosovo today somehow diminishes the huge redress of injustice which happened when the air strikes ended and for the first time in the Balkans, the people ethnically cleansed from their homes were allowed to go back."

 The KFOR peacekeeping force currently has the primary responsibility for security in the province and in some areas is providing 24-hour protection to frightened groups of Serbs. "They are doing a very good job. They are guarding a number of groups of minorities. They are conducting foot patrols and they are doing everything they can to prevent these kinds of things from happening," Janowski said.

 German KFOR troops keep constant watch over the Orthodox seminary in Prizren which now shelters 167 people: 140 Serbs, 20 Albanians and 7 Romas. Reacting to repeated attempts to set fire to Prizren's Orthodox Church, KFOR has also reinforced its protection in the old quarter of the city.

 "Without KFOR, things would be a lot worse," Janowski said. Nonetheless, Janowski said, UNHCR is trying to make sure it does not give a false sense of security to minorities in Kovoso. "We are saying that it is extremely difficult. But there are really not too many options at the moment."

 Those who have fled to Serbia are also facing "a very difficult situation," he said. "They are deprived of all kinds of benefits, unable to get tickets for fuel, and essentially under pressure to go back to Kosovo."

 Janowski said it is difficult to predict how the security situation will develop. "We believe that it will probably improve with the arrival of international police. With tensions and emotions subsiding a little bit over time, it'll probably get better."

 UN spokesperson Therese Gastaut said the UN wants to send in an international police force "as soon as possible" but still has no date for its deployment. "As we have explained over and over again, policemen are not sitting in barracks waiting to come to help us. These are people who are working in their respective countries."

 She noted that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has repeatedly appealed to the 30-some countries that have pledged policeman to try to make them available as rapidly as possible.

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